


taskkill /IM hlvrai.exe

by dino_friends_personal_space



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Panic attack?, Tags Subject to Change, robots and ais
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:28:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27439606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dino_friends_personal_space/pseuds/dino_friends_personal_space
Summary: The simulation ended and Gordon was faced with the reality that all of his friends were AIs. Well, most of them, at least.[it's a wip, more chapters to come!]
Kudos: 14





	taskkill /IM hlvrai.exe

The game was, finally, over. And they had ended up in Chuck E. Cheese. 

It wasn’t too bad. The laughter in the air and the smell of greasy pizza along with it. But then the lights went dark. Gordon was faced with a dark void, no senses there. There was a ringing in his ear, and he swore he heard the robotic words say it was the end of the simulation. 

Gordon looked around, still being faced with a pitch-black screen. Where was everyone? He could have sworn that he was just at the stuffy Chuck E. Cheese party. Instead of being faced with the colorful world, he was stuck in this void. 

Oh no, he was stuck- he couldn’t move. The fear within his veins caused his heartbeat to go wild. The rapid beating of his heart matched the sound of applause. Who was applauding? Was there someone there? Gordon half expected to see G-man. After all, this is how the majority of their meetings occurred. 

Gordon wanted to speak out, to say hello, to say anything at all. But, his mouth was dry and frozen despite how loud he tried to yell. 

“Congratulations Mr. Freeman,” a familiar voice called. He knew that voice intimately. The same phrase, the same person, a different tone though. Regardless, Gordon knew who it was. His mouth unhinged against the suffocating black void. 

“Tommy? TOMMY?” Gordon rasped out, yelled out, whispered out. He said it but he wasn’t aware of how loud he was. More static, more commotion. 

“Oh, dear…” The same voice echoed. Euphoria and relief filled Gordon’s heart. Tommy was still there. Maybe they were still all in the Chuck E. Cheese casino. Maybe Benrey turned off the lights or the power went out. Gordon tried grabbing onto the table, only to reach nothing but the heaviness of the inky darkness. “...Okay- uh- this isn’t good.”

What? What wasn’t good?

Gordon shifted uncomfortably. The beeping of his heart was now a terrible pounding in his head. 

“-heart rate is-” 

Gordon felt a warm hand clasp his shoulder. Who was this? G-man? No, it can’t be. G-man wasn’t as warm as this. The dark screen was pried from his face. Off went the VR headset and he was face to face with Tommy. 

Tommy looked...wrong though. The voice was the same- or at least similar, and it was coming from him as seen by the movement of his lips. The blurry shadow beside him spoke and Gordon felt anger. 

“Should we. Help?” Forzen’s voice called. The wrong-looking Tommy turned towards the blurry shadow beside him and gave a glare. Tommy tilted his head towards the door, signaling to the frame where Forzen voice came from to get out. 

“Tommy! Tommy where’s- where're the others?” Gordon said, gasping like a fish out of water. His head was hurting and the world seemed too detailed and too real. It was like someone had turned up the graphics so high that he was now seeing more detail than he was supposed to process in a single moment. Gordon felt his lungs stagnant, only rapid, shallow breaths escaping. 

“Gordon,” Tommy said, leaning over to grab something off the table beside Gordon. He pressed the object into his hand. Gordon looks at it briefly--it's a plastic dinosaur--and he looks back to Tommy, his face twisted up in distress and panic. “C-can you tell me five things about the dinosaur?” 

Gordon blinks. 

“Uh. Y-yeah,” Gordon said, looking at the plastic dinosaur. It’s a cheap mold since the seam line where the two molds met was apparent. The dinosaur was painted green but some paint on the back of the dinosaur was worn away revealing a grey plastic. The plastic was relatively light but strong and could not be bent. Gordon, of course, said all these descriptions, listing them out in shaky breaths as his heart rate eventually slowed to normal. 

The room was silent for a bit, both staring at the plastic dinosaur Gordon was holding. Gordon looked up with a slightly tired and grateful grin. 

“Thank- thank you. Tommy,” Gordon said. Tommy gave a soft, affectionate chuckle in return. 

“Of course,” Tommy said. Gordon tried to get up from the chair he was seated on but Tommy pressed a firm hand to his chest and pushed him back down, effectively pinning him.

“Huh?”

“The- the trackers, Mr. Freeman,” Tommy said, gesturing to the heart rate monitors on Gordon’s arms. Gordon paused for a bit, allowing Tommy to remove the trackers and other various cables. With a bit of help, Gordon and Tommy made it outside of the room. They were now leaning against the drywall on the outside, watching the slowly darkening overcast sky. It was a bit cold out but the fresh air did help orientate Gordon a bit. 

Gordon exhaled, watching his breath condense in the air. He absentmindedly took whatever Tommy was holding out to him. The metallic click caused Gordon to really look at what was in his hand. Oh, it was a cigarette. Gordon looked to Tommy, seeing that the older man already had a cigarette between his lips and a lighter on fire. 

“Tommy?” Gordon asked softly. Tommy looked back at Gordon with confusion, removing the cigarette from his mouth. “You- you smoke?” 

“Yeah?” Tommy replied. He looked at Gordon in concern before realizing it. He pocketed the cigarette and the lighter. “Sorry, I didn’t realize the shock of you- you must be really used to that other version of me, huh?” 

“Huh?”

“I- I, uh, said that it might be confusing for you. Uh, you were fine in some of the other simulations before, calling for us to end the simulation but this one was- we should have stopped it really. Uh, I didn’t think the AI would cut your hand off,” Tommy said with a shrug. Tommy turned to look into the distance again while Gordon stared at him. 

“So, you aren’t an AI, then. Are, are the others real too? Where are they?” Gordon said. A frown flickered across Tommy’s face. 

“Well, not all of them. See, Mr. Freeman, it was a- the simulation is a training program to test the AI. Robots are good at recognizing processes but not- not anything unexpected. We were testing how well they can adapt,” Tommy explained. “The AIs were given the wik-wikipedia dataset and we used the machine learning real language voice simulators based on the old voice lines.” 

“Who was real?”

“Oh, uh, me, Forzen, Benrey, and G-man were all outside i-influences. I’m the main developer, Benrey rigged up the source engine and Forzen helped with some of the events.”

Oh. Gordon frowned slightly. Bubby, Coomer, Darnold; they weren’t real. Even though Coomer and Bubby got on his nerves sometimes, he still felt a sadness within him. Darnold seemed like he’d be human despite his ramblings about potions. He felt a little silly caring so much for these AI programs. 

“Why was I there?” Gordon asked. It was a program to test the AI after all, and if he had nothing to research, why was he there in the first place? Tommy was the main developer of the project after all. “Like, if you’re the main developer, why weren't you the main character?”

“Uh, I can’t- that’d influence the results. I also c-couldn’t be plugged in fully because I had to take notes. I was just there to keep you o-on track. As for you, we needed an element of randomness that can’t be generated by a computer like calculators.”

“Like calculators?”

“Yeah! Calculators calculate their random numbers using a formula making the numbers not random. If you press the random number button on one graphing calculator and then do it for another calculator of the same brand, you’ll get the same spring of numbers,” Tommy said with a chuckle. His smile dropped when he saw Gordon’s expression.

“Uh- don’t worry, we’ll port the AI out. Cybernetics department- er-” Tommy started. Gordon frowned slightly. Was the cybernetics department actually real? Is that why Coomer wanted to go there? “My mind is blanking on w-what it is but we do the ro- oh robotics lab. Yeah, we’ll get their robot bodies ready there.” 

Tommy gave Gordon a grin, the corners of his eyes crinkling slightly. Despite his joyful, excited smile, Tommy looked...tired. The dark rings under his eyes were permasive and his face was hastily shaven. It must have been many sleepless nights running the simulation. 

“Doing great work, Mr. Freeman! I’ll- I’ll leave you to your own thoughts. Holler if you need anything,” Tommy said, giving Gordon a firm pat on his shoulder. The metal door hinge squeaked open and fell with a thud.

Gordon was left alone outside, the smell of smoke and the phantom pain of his arm still lingering. The game was, finally, over but he didn’t really want it to be.

**Author's Note:**

> The word "permasive" is not a spelling error actually! It's a new adjective and it means "spreading throughout and lingering there like a stain". Basically, it's a combination of "pervasive" and "permissive" because I couldn't decide which one to use.


End file.
